Affirming the Differently Abled on the Indian Silver Screen: A study of Black and Hichki

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume V, Issue III, March 2021 | ISSN 2454–6186

Affirming the Differently Abled on the Indian Silver Screen:
A study of Black and Hichki

Mouli Sarkar
Assistant Lecturer of English,
Bengal Institute of Polytechnic (Affiliated to WBSCTVESD, Kolkata) Birbhum, West Bengal

Abstract: This paper attempts to focus on two contemporary Indian movies on the relation between the differently challenged persons, particularly women, and the social dynamics, Black (2005), and Hichki (2018). Seen against the tradition of Indian Cinema, in particular, and of popular culture in this subcontinent, in general, such productions crucially depart from the conventional cultural tradition by foregrounding the so-called disabled persons as fighters against the socio-cultural receptions of the subject body and codes of ‘normalcy’. They are further set within the contemporary human rights movements. This study in social science of the relation between normalcy, power and culture in the above mentioned two movies is, therefore, framed within the theoretical discourse of Disability and Cultural Studies and look forward to a democratic society based on equality, freedom and justice.

I. INTRODUCTION

Representation of the Differently-abled in Contemporary Indian Cinema

This article focuses on representations of the differently-abled woman in two 21st century productions of the Indian Cinema, Black (2005) and Hichki (2018). Seen against the tradition of the Indian Cinema, in particular, and of the sub-continental popular-culture, in general, a few movies of the first two decades of the 21st century make a crucial break by foregrounding the so-called ‘disabled’ women not as villains, or comic interludes or outcastes and victims, but as rebels, who radically question and alter the socio-cultural receptions of codes of ‘normalcy’ in relation to the close association between gender and corporeality. The interrelation between normalcy, power and culture in these works can be, therefore, framed within the objectives of Disability Studies (DS) that interrogates also the norms of Patriarchal state and social policies. That DS “from its political foundations and early theoretical formulations in the late 1960s and early 1970s … has now become recognized [not only] as an academic discipline in its own right” (Roulstone et al 03), but also as a socio-cultural activism to shape other social vectors like class, creed and gender, is strongly established by the making of these movies by the mainstream production houses of the Indian film-industry, which celebrated its centenary in

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